The undersigned civil society organizations, committed to the defense of the rule of law, human rights and democracy in Latin America, strongly reject the decisions adopted on May 1 by the Salvadoran Congress to arbitrarily remove from office the judges and alternate judges of the Constitutional Chamber of the Supreme Court of Justice and the Attorney General, and to irregularly appoint their replacements, in violation of the constitutional and international legal framework, and warn of a serious risk to the preservation of the democratic system in the country.
The removal of high-ranking officials of the justice system, adopted by the majority coalition linked to the governing party of President Nayib Bukele, was the result of parliamentary motions that were dispensed from their regular procedure, which were not studied or debated in the legally established parliamentary procedure. Likewise, the grounds for this request are not based on previously regulated grounds and are related to generic accusations of “violation of the Constitution” in decisions and actions adopted by these bodies in the exercise of their control functions. In both cases, the persons involved were not informed of the facts they are accused of, nor of the infractions that support the request for dismissal, and they were not given the opportunity to exercise their defense, in violation of the most essential guarantees of due process.
Subsequently, the Legislative Assembly proceeded to directly appoint new persons to occupy these positions, without calling for public competition, in direct violation of the Political Constitution of the country. These irregular appointments were imposed by force by the National Civil Police, who immediately deployed operations to occupy de facto the institutional headquarters of the Supreme Court of Justice and the Attorney General’s Office.
This is in addition to the disregard, both by President Nayib Bukele and the Legislative Assembly controlled by the governing party, of the ruling issued by the Constitutional Chamber, which declared unconstitutional the dismissal of its members, for directly attacking the republican and democratic system of government and the principle of judicial independence.
The aforementioned acts constitute a serious attack on the independence of the Salvadoran justice system, but they also eliminate the main democratic counterweights to political power, concentrated in the governing party. In particular, the illegitimate capture of judicial authorities linked to political power, and the subsequent disappearance of the principle of separation of powers, constitutes a dangerous precedent for democracy in the hemisphere.
We alert the international human rights organizations, and the international and inter-American community of nations about the seriousness of these facts, and we publicly call for the adoption of immediate measures to avoid a scenario of democratic rupture in the country, through the mechanisms provided for in the Inter-American Democratic Charter.
